The dreams ended the same: with a noose around her neck and her hanging from the big white pine.

She woke up at midnight on the living room couch and was totally disoriented: she thought she was still Hattie, waking up in the little crooked cabin.

“You okay?” her dad said, standing over her. He was in boxers and a T-shirt. His hair was ruffled and his eyes were puffy.

“Yeah, bad dream,” she said.

“You screamed in your sleep,” he said. “Scared the hell out of me. Woke me up out of a sound sleep. I came tearing out here thinking something…I don’t know what.”

“Sorry.” She rubbed her face and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the dream.

“Then when I got out here, you were talking in your sleep.”

“Yeah? What’d I say?”

“ ‘I’ll always be here,’ ” he said. “That’s what you said.”

Olive got chills.

“You sure you’re feeling okay, Ollie?” Daddy said. He put a hand on her forehead, like she might have a fever. “You don’t look right.”

“I’m fine, Dad,” she said. But she was anything but fine.

“If you’re sick tomorrow, I can call Riley, see if she can come hang out with you.”

“No, Dad, I’m fine, really.”

“Things going okay at school?”

“They’re fine,” she said.

The truth was, even though she was only a few days in, the year was off to a better start. She hadn’t cut so much as a single class. She showed up prepared, did all of her homework.

“Okay, let’s both go back to sleep,” Daddy said. “Don’t go having any more bad dreams.”

“No more bad dreams,” she said. And she meant it. Because no way was she falling back to sleep.

She waited until it was quiet upstairs, then she went into the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight, shoved it into her backpack. She snuck out the back door, crossed the yard, and walked through the woods to the bog, following the path that started at the edge of her yard by the hollow tree. She stopped there, checked the hollow, foolishly hoping that there might be a message inside. Only pine needles and a wood louse.

The night was cool and moonlit. There was a dampness to the air that clung to her.

She got to the bog and found it covered with a fine mist. She thought she saw a figure on the other side, over by where Hattie’s house once stood. She shone her light across the water, then made her way along the edge toward the stone foundation, but there was nothing. No one.

Still, she felt she wasn’t alone.

She took her necklace off, watched it swing in the moonlight.